Post Date
May 11 2024

Greenifying Older Building in Emerging Countries

Pakistan has a rapidly growing population, with a burgeoning fraction residing or working in urban buildings or industrial complexes. This population growth, along with aging building infrastructure, puts tremendous pressure on the supply of three basic resources: electricity, gas, and water. The study focused on development of Internet of Things (IoT) based approach that seeks to retrofit the current lot of buildings with an Integrated Resource Management (IRM) system. IRM can remove inefficiencies in the resource consumption and improve the safety and living standards of Pakistani citizens. The local conservation of resources directly results in a country wide better supply-demand balance that provides economic respite (no need to buy additional resource to meet demand) and also keeps the citizens satisfied (demand being met at lower cost). The IRM's ability to enforce safe living standards and prevent fatal accidents indirectly provides socioeconomic benefit by maintaining a healthy and able workforce that contributes to the development of Pakistan. We thus target two important aspects of the Vision 2025 of the Government of Pakistan: integrated resource management, and modernising infrastructure. This project required an initial survey to quantify inefficiencies in resource consumption at building level, followed by a prototype development and evaluation of the IRM solution that can curb these inefficiencies through preventive resource management.